**5. Contributions to pedagogical practices with children from 0 to 6 years of age**

Nutrition in the early years of life can affect cognitive performance in later ages [7, 55]. The rapid growth of the brain during the last 3 months of gestation and 2 years of life makes it a vulnerable organ to dietary inadequacies during the first years of life and may create future cognitive and motor problems. In addition, micronutrients are essential for metabolism and, in particular, cell division and tissue growth, such as nervous, muscular, and skeletal [56]. A child with learning or motor difficulties does not necessarily suffer from cognitive problems—they can be of a nutritional order [45], as shown in **Table 1**. It is necessary to provide the child with the correct food, in the necessary quantities, respecting its development, including the digestive system and the microbiota, whose development is completed around 4 years of age [113]. Therefore, it is paramount that the child receives adequate nutrition. It means receiving the correct amount of nutrients in the required period of development, both at home and at school.

In addition to nutrition, creating a stimulating environment for development is also important to actively engage the child's mind to strengthen his neuronal network [114]. The play offers broad physical, emotional, cognitive, and social benefits, as it allows: (i) the development of motor skills, communication, creativity and problem-solving, social competence, and resilience; (ii) promotes alternative scenarios for the experience of their social repertoire; and (iii) signals for positive and negative behaviors resulting from the child's development process. Free play is of vital importance for healthy childhood development recognized by the United Nations as a fundamental right of the child [115]. However, many of them do not receive the benefits of play in its fullness, either because they are pressured by the accelerated lifestyle of parents or because they live in socially vulnerable communities, which interfere directly with academic performance, socialization with other children, and in her relationship with her parents [116].

Detailed knowledge of the mechanisms that control sensitive periods and plasticity, which, in turn, happen during sensitive periods, provides the basis for the development of procedures to help minimize the long-term effects of harmful experiences during early childhood and maximizes the acquisition of motor and cognitive functions once appropriate conditions are restored. Such knowledge can also lead to more effective methods for educating a child so that he can take advantage of the full potential that the nervous system can offer so that the child can learn from his own experiences [117].

The children who come to school are the result of the stimuli they have received so far. An unsatisfactory performance in any activity should not be treated in a simplified way, because several factors are involved in this result and may be signaling other aspects that need to be worked on than academics. Child development is multidisciplinary. Therefore, the approach to poor performance should also be multidisciplinary. In addition, child development depends not only on the maturation of the brain but also on the interactions between the child and the environment around him. Because of this, the observed development results of different children can vary substantially. Learning about the development sequences and the context in which it needs to happen is necessary for understanding possible problems in development to thus plan effective interventions [118]. It is important to plan interventions appropriate to the period of development in which the child is, providing the necessary stimuli so that he can achieve the skills provided for his/her age, instead of being classified based on his/her disabilities. These interventions are simple, as shown in **Table 2**, where the minimum stimuli required for each age group from 0 to 6 years old are placed.


*For each nutrient in the table, behaviors can be observed when one of them is deficient. The functions and respective bibliography are also described.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Observable behaviors in children with some nutritional deficiency.*


*Integration of Motor, Cognitive, Nutritional, Metabolic, and Epigenetic Influence Variables… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113145*


**Table 2.**

*Basic nutritional, cognitive, and motor stimuli needed to provide a healthy environment to child development from 0 to 6 years old.*

### **6. Discussion and conclusions**

Child development unfolds along individual paths whose continuous and discontinuous trajectories, as well as a series of significant transitions are shaped by the interrelation between the different vulnerabilities and resilience. The moment when these changes occur is very important: Child development is liable to risks and open to protective measures that influence not only the first years of life but also adulthood. What happens during the first years of life is extremely important, not only because it promotes an indelible mark on the well-being of the adult, but also because it determines how robust or fragile the subsequent stages will be [119]. It is also necessary to consider that there is great variability in children's behaviors—each one is unique—because both genetic factors and the influence of the environment interact to give rise to the individual organism. The basic patterns are determined by heredity, but the genetic determinants are expressed through interactions with various aspects of the environment: The environment provides the energy, substance, and environment to unfold the potentialities of the individual—no individual develops in a vacuum. Stimuli offered to a child have broad consequences on the behavior and physiology of this adult [120]. Variations in the behavior of the mother, for example, directly influence epigenetic processes, in which genes "turn on and off " according to signs of the environment in critical periods of development, impacting the social environment, considering that the genome acts in the transmission of individual differences in response to stress [121]. Democratizing academic knowledge about child development in the form of a tool that can be used by educators, childhood professionals, and parents would be a way to create the conditions for those who work with early childhood, to have the necessary knowledge to provide the appropriate stimuli and environment to provide the child with healthy and full development, or in time to intervene to remedy the problems that will potentially result in difficulties in later stages of the child's life [122].

*Integration of Motor, Cognitive, Nutritional, Metabolic, and Epigenetic Influence Variables… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113145*

Promoting the conditions for the development of the child to occur in a healthy way depends on knowing how it manifests itself in different aspects throughout child development [20, 118, 123]. Paraphrasing Gesell and Gesell, we need to conserve the best in childhood if we want to save to the world the best in youth [20].
